The Wall was gloomy and his solo LPs, The Pros And Cons Of Hitchhiking (1983) and Radio K.A.O.S. Roger Waters is thought, by many, to be the gloomiest man in rock. Syd was extraordinarily charming and attractive and alive and talented but… whatever happened to him, happened to him.” I don’t know what went wrong with Syd because I’m not an expert in whatever it is, what they call schizophrenia.
I haven’t seen him for 10 years… more than 10 years, probably. And he’s wearing exactly the same T-shirt (well, it’s a different shade – pink not black – but of identical cut) that he was sporting on the cover of Pink Floyd’s 1969 LP Umma Gumma. In the guest lounge of a genteel hotel in the picturesque town of Stockbridge, Hampshire – where Waters has a home because the fishing is excellent down here, apparently – the lofty rock icon sits gazing at the cover of an ancient Country Life, a pint glass of local ale before him. He’s the one who invented giant inflatable pigs, the one who tortured schoolyards of children by making them sing his catchphrase (“We dahn nee nur edercayshun, we dahn nee nur fort corntrawel”) all out of tune, the one who once recorded a “song” called Several Species Of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together In A Cave Grooving With A Pict, the one whose doomy sound “anthems” about “alienation” and how awful everything is have worried listeners all over the world for several years. But there is another original member, no longer in the legendary rock experience that was “Floyd”, who appears to be a degree off beam: Roger Waters. “Syd” is, of course, Syd Barrett, original member of Pink Floyd, beautiful boy who wrote extraordinary things like Apples And Oranges and Astronomy Domine and flipped his cork and disappeared. “How’s Syd?” one would go and the existing member of Pink Floyd – whether Dave Gilmour or Nick Mason or the other one – would, no doubt, blink briefly, pop a cheese’n’pineapple-savoury-on-a-toothpick into his mouth, bray “What? Cor! Frightfully good, these canapes!” and wander off to hob-nob with Nigel Mansell or somebody really interesting. “So how’s Syd these days?” If one happened to bump up against an existing member of the legendary rock combo Pink Floyd in some “social situation” (cocktails at Brands Hatch, probably), that’s the only thing one would be inclined to say. Who the hell does ROGER WATERS think he is?
How did it go again? “We dahn nee nur edercayshun…” Yes, that was it! “We dahn nee nur fort corntrawel” It’s good to know that in these days of silly disposable pop rubbish, there remains one man brave and brilliant enough to address the Really Big Questions.
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